Ernest Fenollosa

Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (February 18, 1853 – September 21, 1908) was an American art historian of Japanese art, professor of philosophy and political economy at Tokyo Imperial University. An important educator during the modernization of Japan during the Meiji Era, Fenollosa was an enthusiastic Orientalist who did much to preserve traditional Japanese art.

Fenollosa was the son of Manuel Francisco Ciriaco Fenollosa, a Spanish pianist, and Mary Silsbee and attended Hacker Grammar School in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Salem High School before going on to study philosophy and sociology at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1874. After a year at the art school of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, during which time he married Elizabeth Goodhue Millett, he traveled to Japan in 1878 at the invitation of American zoologist and Orientalist Edward S. Morse to teach political economy and philosophy at the Imperial University at Tokyo. There he studied ancient temples, shrines and art treasures with his assistant, Okakura Kakuzō.

During his time in Japan, Fenollosa helped create the nihonga (Japanese) style of painting with Japanese artists Kanō Hōgai (1828–1888) and Hashimoto Gahō (1835–1908). In May 1882 he delivered a lecture on "An Explanation of the Truth of Art," which was widely circulated and quoted.

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